Wow...Not making the gas/comms interfaces compatible smacks me of the same mistake as the round/square C02 scrubber canisters that almost doomed the Apollo 13 rescue.
Quote from: cferreir on 04/05/2018 12:02 amWow...Not making the gas/comms interfaces compatible smacks me of the same mistake as the round/square C02 scrubber canisters that almost doomed the Apollo 13 rescue.Starliner and Crew Dragon are not working in conjunction. They are stand-alone systems. The redundancy is in having two providers for crew transport.Having both a Starliner AND a Crew Dragon at the ISS, at the same time, will be the exception rather than the norm.A crew stranded at ISS because Starliner is grounded/malfunctioning will be picked up by a freshly sent-up Crew Dragon. Additional SpaceX IVA suits will go up on that ship to "suit" the additional crew members coming back down. The Starliner suits will remain on orbit, with the Starliner.And vice versa.No need for compatible interfaces. The strength of having two providers, to be each other's back-ups, is in having dissimilar systems.
It's faster and easier to go back to ISS than to launch a rescue mission directly to a capsule.
Quote from: envy887 on 04/05/2018 12:54 pmIt's faster and easier to go back to ISS than to launch a rescue mission directly to a capsule.Only if the RCS is still functioning. And we are getting OT.
Woods, there is another potential situation; unlikely, but still potential.Remember the old scifi movie "Marooned"? Such a situation is possible.Suppose that the crew is no longer aboard the ISS but after separating, the re-entry burn failed. That crew is now stuck in orbit.Both the Dragon and Starliner spacecraft should be able to dock with each other because they've both been designed to dock at the station with the same adapter. But how long could either crew survive on orbit until a rescue could launch? I don't know the answer to that.How quickly could Boeing get another Starliner up there? I would think that the Atlas launch vehicle would be the long pole in that situation, meaning that Boeing would be incapable of launching another Starliner in time. That leaves SpaceX, which has a stated goal of having several nearly flight-ready Falcon-9's and Dragons in the barn at all times. How long would it take them to launch a rescue mission? Again I don't know the answer to that either. But it does seem to me that because the 2 spacecraft could dock with each other that an exchange of flight suits would not be necessary at all. The stranded crew would simply enter the docked rescue spacecraft, don the provided flight suits and come home. Or, just ride home in a shirt-sleeve environment if flight suits were not available for the rescue.All this depends of course on the length of time either spacecraft can support its crew after leaving the ISS v.s. how long it would take to launch a Dragon rescue spacecraft. I say Dragon because I don't believe Boeing would be capable of responding in time. They may have a Starliner available but the Atlas launch vehicles are long lead items - they won't have one available. So the bigger question is not the compatibility of the flight suits, but whether or not NASA will have a LON policy for Commercial Crew in place. That question should probably have a dedicated thread as it is OT for this thread.
EDIT: also isn't there a male/female problem of docking to crew capsules together? The crew capsules will have male docking connectors?
There is no LON policy for CCP. Shuttle had a LON policy, courtesy of STS-107 exposing a critical design flaw.
rhoracio: big congratulations to you all! Q: would you please explain does SpaceX'es helmet visor open?nasa: The visor does open. We normally have it open on our way to the pad, but closed for launch and for entry. -Bobnasa: Yes. There's two push buttons about where your chin is. They allow it to pop open whenever you need it to. - Doug